Nature is Homesteading

Nature Herself oversaw homesteading in the hollows these past few months. After ten weeks’ absence, we returned to the hollows in late September for a booksigning tour for A Box of Magick, to find nine plump pumpkins (Cinderella species in between the 40-50 artichoke plants and Jack o’Lantern pumpkins in the corners of the garlic bed) and four juicy watermelons. We harvested these beautiful gourds and left the vines and leaves to compost where they fell. I transplanted the opulent rose geranium, which was thriving wherever I put her. This plant of self-love has always been an ally. Joey began building the fourth flower bed and cut out the poison oak choking the century-old olive, fig and apples trees around the property.

Now it’s early November and we are back at the hollows. The olive trees are producing like crazy. I need to find the secret recipe one of our AirBnB guests gave us for salt instead of lye to process the fruit. I’m getting used to having a refrigerator versus living out of a cooler and the meals are improving. Rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender, and comfrey survived our long absence; borage and basil did not. It seems that the artichoke will continually grow, even though the fruit won’t be ready for a year, and its purple flower continues to bloom.

Halloween is the time to plant garlic, so I cleared away the decaying pumpkin leaves and vines and filled an entire bed with garlic cloves with the exception of a robust thyme and two strawberry plants, which are protected from the deer by the stink of garlic and the wire fencing.

We brought a frame for the bed and box springs – no more sleeping on a mattress on the floor.  New solar lights on the covered porch allow us to enjoy the forest at night and see each other and the glasses filled to the brim with delicious wines we bought from our favorite Mendo winery, Artevino Wines.

A true blessing this visit was meeting new friends Brett, Missy and Ceila, who can trade with us: Brett will show us the edible mushrooms and will help us extract and mill a 100-year-old fallen redwood tree to make a dining room table. Joey and our friend Dave hunted a few of the 40-50 destructive wild boar on their property, which they will turn into food for their dogs – among other things. Apparently wild boars are too active to create the fat needed for bacon – so that’s sad. Missy is selling my books her store, Re-Evolution in downtown Willits, and together we made Witches’ Torches. Ceiba, their 10-year-old daughter, is an aerial acrobat and an artist who has inspired the main character of my next book.

Last winter, the heavy rains caused the hillside to collapse into the road, which then dropped ten feet. Thankfully, our neighbor fixed the road, but that’s not entirely feasible to depend on others. So, on the way home, we drove to Bend, Oregon, to check out a tractor. It’s our ten-year anniversary present to each other, which makes me laugh at the irony of a former OC girl ecstatic about joys of homesteading the gardens we will plant in this beautiful forest.

Making Gardens

I love to plunge my hands into the dirt - especially in summer. Every morning I wake in Willits, I drink a leisurely cup of coffee listening to the forest birds singing. I pour the water and leftover grounds onto the garden and greet each new leaf or flower with deep affection. Each trip to the Hollows brings a new adventure. This time we tried out a new battery storage, hung out with Kobe and created gardens.

On Father’s Day, it was sweet to watch Joey and Kobe tetra a burned-out redwood bark to create a terrace for the small garden that I salute every morning. Joey had cleared away a huge patch of poison oak so that we could grow lavender around the cottage to keep the ticks at bay. We’ll see if it works! So far we are growing rosemary, holly, lavender, calendula, chamomile, and rose geranium. I’ve asked Mama Earth to stay wet in this shaded spot while we are gone and made sure to welcome the multitude of elementals and faeries to this garden!

We removed irrigation and weeded sixty more grow pots. The soil is still in most of the pots because we need to terrace hill for the vegetable patch and herb garden. My menfolk gathered fallen trunks of Douglas fir, Madrone and Oak and made a raised bed. Oh how I ached to put in some plants but since our plan is to visit for a week every month, and this garden is in full sun, I decided to wait. The plan is to make five more boxes here from what the forest provides.

Our new power station is a game changer with two 110V plugs and two chargers. This Yeti by Goal Zero only lost 25% of its charging capacity in five days with three people using it. Loved it. Now we have energy for longer stays.

We froze water in a stock pot at home and transported in a cooler to keep the food cold in the icebox. Unfortunately, the water hadn’t frozen solid so we had to buy ice blocks again. But the road has to be fixed by winter so that’s where we will invest next - culverts and rocks before a propane refrigerator. Sigh. Homesteading requires such patience. I’m certain its good for me.

There is a beautiful spring on the property that I thought I would bless with crystals, statues and prayers. Then Joey put up a trail camera and we discovered that the bear, mountain lion, and deer visit this place daily. This water is already made sacred by Mother Earth’s children.

Kobe and I spent Summer Solstice in Fort Bragg - just 45 minute drive through the redwood forest. We have the best conversations, especially under the trees. We found connection, healing and laughter on the longest day of the year. I delivered signed copies of my books to eclectic shops and independent bookstores in Mendocino and the following day as we visited Ukiah. We hung out in the cannabis lounge at the Plant Shop where I will be teaching my Ritual Herbalism class for their Wellness Day on July 30. On the final night of our stay, Kobe stepped up to sing and play guitar for five original songs he wrote at open mike night at Shanachie Pub in Willits.

Happy Summer!

My Happy Place

“Why did you come to Willits?” asks the bartender at Diggers, a bar named thusly because the owners also own the Willits cemetery.

“I am a forest witch and I want to eat fresh fruit, attend festivals and hang out with my people.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” the bartender smiles and slides me a frothy IPA. I clink beers with my man and then he proceeds to win four pool games in a row, but how we laughed made it all worthwhile.

I am in my happy place when I am snuggled into the Hollows. Life feels closer, more real. Our home is 800 square feet on 44 acres with a coastal breeze and a southeastern view of 20,000 acres of privately own forest. We watched a bear from our kitchen window while drinking coffee one morning. Later in the afternoon, we found the bear den in a burned-out redwood tree. I thought the Fairy Ring of ten or so redwood trees could be my ritual spot, but the place is already holy ground.

In this visit we have tackled an amazing amount of projects:

1.       We removed plastic nets and the dowels, held by eye-hooks from the ceiling that the former owners used to dry Cannabis. This 400sf back room is now our bedroom/living room. Joey put in two windows that look out onto a fern grotto because our first two visits felt like we were sleeping in a gambrel-styled container, except for the bad drywall job that I have covered with tapestries. You could not see your hand in front of your face and had to trust the motion detector light to go on before you ran into the wooden beam in the middle of the room. (I’ve covered the beam with a scarf to soften the blow in case of the accidental collision). Next is a sliding glass door onto a deck. I am so excited about this! 

2.       Our sweet cottage is at the end of a two-mile dirt and gravel timber road that Joey is repairing with the wisdom of 25 years at CalTrans. We have whacked the weeds growing in the middle and sides of the road before they become brush, a dangerous fire hazard to drive over in summer.  He piled the big rocks over the potholes filled with rainwater, then the little rocks on top so the water drains better. I did the same thing to create a step off the front porch. Joey improved the old timber road for nearly quarter of a mile with French drains, ditch lines, and rock bridges. I never knew road maintenance could be so sexy until I watched my man haul the tenth wheel barrel of dirt and rocks, all glistening. 

3.       Over the last three trips, we unplugged the irrigation, removed t-bars, pulled weeds, and turned over the soil from 60 grow pots. This trip, I shoveled dirt from the majority of the pots which we raked into mounds for a garden of wildflowers and formed a spiral path to the center where we will make a stone-built firepit.

4.       We discovered that it takes about a gallon of frozen water per day to keep the icebox cold. Joey is going to create a container that perfectly fits the shelf for ice because one large block holds it temperature longer than one-gallon jugs.

5.       We painted the door turquoise and created a sweet garden right off the porch that I can easily tend and feed the morning’s coffee grounds. Last visit, we planted rosemary, calendula, lavender and chamomile. I was thrilled to see that had all grown in our two-week absence. We added holly, rose geranium and red clover to the garden and they all got a good raining so I am hopeful they will do well. The plan to plant lavender all over the house to keep the ticks away.  I’ll transform the hill I look out upon from kitchen window or porch from grow pots into a vegetable and herb garden. I will forest bathe every day.

I returned to our cottage one afternoon after weed whacking a path in the tall grass to my chair where I get one bar for morning texts. I sat down on the deck and a tick fell onto my writing desk. Joey said we had to kill the tick or it would jump on us and he described the whole bloody mess. He told me how to roll my thumbnail over the bug until I heard a pop. I couldn’t do it at first, but then I thought of a Waldorf mom who had gotten Lyme disease and was afraid to go outside afterwards. So, I rolled my nail over the tick and literally screamed when I heard the loud pop of the bug’s protective shell cracking. Then we laughed.
My happy place is always where love and laughter live.